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Activists Dave Burgess and Will Saunders emboldened protests against Australia’s involvement in Iraq in 2003 when they scaled the Opera House and painted “No War” in blood-red paint.
Now the Herald’s iconic photograph by Phil Carrick, capturing cleaners trying to wash off the message – along with the paint and paint brushes the two used and the Dunlop Volley shoes Burgess wore – forms part of an Iraq display in the Australian War Memorial’s new Anzac Hall.
“It is a serious thing to be in that space,” Burgess said on Thursday from his Hunter Valley home.
Two decades ago, the pair lost every legal battle except one.
They were fined $151,000 and jailed for nine months. Then prosecutors argued that the paint, the pot and shoes, and the Opera House snow globes embellished with the “No War” slogan the men gave to people who made donations, could be sold and become proceeds of crime.
Burgess said: “They literally tried to wipe [the protest] out of memory. They took our paint and pot, and tried to destroy them. They had become historical items.”
Burgess and Saunders agreed to never sell the pots and brushes; they have been donated to the memorial.
AWM director Matt Anderson said such items were “a powerful reminder that, in any healthy democracy, decisions to go to war and our community’s determined desire for peace are always interconnected”.
Interest in pro- and anti-war propaganda was strong among collectors, researchers and those who appreciated the art and design, said leading Sydney gallerist Josef Lebovic, an expert in photographs and printed materials.
Over 50 years, he has amassed thousands of items now for sale as part of a collection called Australia at War. Some sell for as much as $2000.
It includes recruitment posters, with slogans such as “You really go places in the Navy”, and others urging men to sign up to protect those they love, advertisements by companies including Qantas supporting the war effort, and ephemera from special events.
Some of Australia’s most famous artists were recruited, including Norman Lindsay, Frank Hinder and Will Mahoney.
In between drawing naked, wide-hipped nymphs and writing the children’s book The Magic Pudding, Lindsay used his skills to encourage men to enlist in the First World War when opposition to military conscription was growing.
A reporter for The Bulletin, Lindsay drew a German soldier whose arms dripped with what looked like red blood as he reached to quash the allies.
Lebovic’s collection includes a range of two-page pamphlets by Lindsay that folded into a letter-sized parcel.
Items like these are now used by the AWM to teach school children about propaganda.
Sometimes a striking image can effect change where words fail.
Burgess recalled that the photo and television coverage of the March 2003 Opera House protest went around the world.
Burgess said he had written thousands of words in protest over the years. “But suddenly writing five letters, upside down from our perspective, and everyone wanted to hear what we had to say.”
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